Geo-information systems are systems that are capable of integrating, storing, editing, analyzing, sharing, and displaying geographically referenced information. These systems can be utilized by system users to conveniently obtain information concerning particular geographic locations that are of interest to the users. Some conventional geo-information systems provide users access to street level images whose features have been digitized from photographs of the corresponding street sides.
A number of conventional geo-information systems (Google Earth™, Virtual Earth™) allow a user to browse images of street sides and enable the user to visually explore the location. For example, using a conventional geo-information system, a user can visually explore storefronts and local businesses that are located along the displayed street sides. To accommodate browsing of the images along a street side, the images of consecutive buildings can be stitched together in long panoramas, such as is shown in FIG. 1 which depicts a stitched panorama of a street side such as may be presented by a conventional geo-information system.
Unedited panoramas, like the one that is shown in FIG. 1, are difficult to browse as their resolution can be much higher than the resolution of the conventional display screens upon which they may be presented. Using conventional geo-information systems, in order to browse such a panorama, a user can zoom (e.g., enlarge) the image and scroll a viewing window along the panorama. However, the viewing window may only show a small subpart of the street side, and thus the user may lose the perception of context. In contrast, zooming out (e.g., decreasing the size of the image), may enable the user to view the entire panorama as a narrow image, but can result in a loss of the visibility of fine details of the image's content.
Thus, many conventional geo-information systems cannot perform the basic types of image transformations that are associated with image browsing without surrendering advantageous visual attributes of the originally presented image, such as its context or fine details of its content. Consequently, conventional geo-information systems inadequately perform the basic types of image transformations that are needed to provide users with a truly satisfactory browsing experience.